It has long been known that headsets for two-way voice communication can advantageously be constructed from small, lightweight components in a miniaturized form wherein receive and transmit transducers are placed in a capsule mounted near the user's ear. Speech is conducted to a microphone transducer via an acoustic tube positioned near the user's mouth, while incoming communications emanating from a receive transducer are conducted to the user's ear via a second acoustic tube. Various miniature headsets have employed the so-called "post-auricle" configuration, wherein the transducers are placed in a capsule which is mounted behind the ear of the user, and is shaped to fit generally along the saddle area behind the ear. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,548,118, issued Dec. 15, 1970, to K. J. Hutchings, discloses such a post-auricle arrangement, with an acoustic voice tube passing over the ear and into the headset capsule, and an acoustic ear tube passing from the capsule under the wearer's ear and up into the ear canal. The arrangement disclosed in the Hutchings patent is embodied in a headset commercially sold by Plantronics, Inc., the assignee of the present application, under its trademark STARSET.RTM..
It has also been known, of course, to provide hearing-aid devices and earphones having "in-the-ear" adapters which are held in the concha of the ear. These adapters are typically custom-molded for either the right or the left ear of a particular individual wearer.
The aforementioned post-auricle headset designs have attempted to provide positioning by means of a horn or projection which extends over the top of and engages the top of the ear to hold the capsule in place behind the ear. The "in-the-ear" adapters for hearing-aids and earphones are positioned by means of contours and projections molded to fit the ear; or by means of projections for engaging the fleshy convolutions of the concha of the ear.